Column IJsbrand Velzeboer: Notorious slobs

The shelf life of food products is largely determined by the party that micro-organisms throw inside our food. Nervous QA managers try to prevent this feast and safeguard food safety by introducing control measures such as cleaning protocols, clothing rules and a solid prerequisite program. Employees are wrapped up like white space creatures to prevent human contamination from ending up on vulnerable perishable products. Yet things often go wrong. Every food safety system has leaks and gaps. In my head, that song from Monty Python’s Life of Brian starts playing: ‘If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten…’

The company toilet for production staff rarely has a washbasin close enough to clean your hands after a little mishap with the toilet paper. Only once outside the toilet area do you find a communal washing trough. Odd. The Dutch Building Decree requires such a decontamination sink in every newly built home, while the EU hygiene regulation seems to overlook the matter entirely. There we only find a set of obvious requirements, for instance, that toilets may not open directly into production areas and must be connected to the sewage system.

And then there’s the drying. Air dryers are a hygienic disaster! They dry dirt firmly onto your hands. A handwashing check using UV light and a luminescent cream reveals these blind spots with painful clarity. Paper towels actually remove dirt through mechanical action; so why don’t we see those everywhere? Once back at their workstation, employees fiddle with their nose, their ears, hoist up their trousers, and carry on working.

I could go on for a while. Because what about the company mobile phone with that greasy film, the door handles, the white visitor helmets and universal safety slippers, the pull cord of the rapid door, the handle of a pallet truck…? When I ask whether these hidden grubby offenders are included in the cleaning program, things often go quiet. ‘Shit,’ I hear them say. Meanwhile, in my head, Brian keeps singing on cheerfully: ‘Life is a piece of shit, when you look at it!’

IJsbrand Velzeboer
Curative Food Technologist